Rooms At The Top

A Bird`s-eye View Of Penthouses, Those Mansions In The Sky

February 07, 1988|By Abigail Foerstner.

The gargoyles decorating the two-story fireplace and the plaster reliefs of mythical beasts above the arched balcony doors suggest that Julian and Eleanor Jackson live in a medieval castle or a gothic cathedral.

Actually they live in a Chicago high-rise, one that defies every notion of a high-rise apartment as a glass-and-steel cube. Their duplex penthouse sits atop a vintage 1920s building on Chestnut Street.

Julian Jackson jokingly calls the whimsical detailing of the apartment`s architecture ``early Balaban and Katz,`` referring to the developers of several of Chicago`s ornate 1920s motion picture palaces. With its decorative columns and moldings, its carved wooden balcony overlooking the living room, its plaster rosettes, arches and slate stairway leading to the second floor, the Jacksons` residence does create a fairy-tale cocoon.

Viewed while driving down Lake Shore Drive or from the windows of neighboring buildings that tower over the vintage high-rises, penthouses appear as mansions sitting on top of skyscrapers. The older ones often come complete with gabled roofs and gardens. Newer buildings have streamlined the penthouse look, but outdoor terraces and duplex architecture remain signature touches for these rare, elite and ever-so-urban residences.

With the demand for luxury apartments outstripping the supply in Chicago, duplexes both at and below the penthouse level get snapped up fast, according to real estate agents.

``It`s like living in the suburbs. You need ladders and shovels`` to prune trees and plant seasonal rounds of flowers, said Jack Kreitinger of his penthouse terrace in a contemporary condominium 21 stories up. Kreitinger`s suburbia just happens to overlook Lincoln Park and the lake.

Builders early on designed luxury apartments to woo a clientele of down-to-earth mansion dwellers, who warmed up slowly to the idea of apartment living.

When Potter Palmer turned the rustic Near North Side into the Gold Coast in the 1880s, he set the trend for fashionable residences in the area with his own sprawling brick castle of a home at 1350 N. Lake Shore Dr., where a high- rise now stands. The socially prominent of New York, London and Paris might live in apartments, but Palmer and his friends snubbed any such notion for Chicago.

Yet even the millionaires couldn`t stem the rapid growth of the Near North Side, and a generation after they arrived on the Gold Coast, their behemoth mansions became urban dinosaurs. Prominent architects such as Benjamin Marshall, who designed the Drake Hotel, applied their fine-tuned sense of opulence to luxury city apartments. Marshall favored neoclassical exteriors and palatial floor plans that, at his 1550 N. State Pkwy. building, devoted an entire floor to each apartment.

Marshall`s contemporary, Howard Van Doren Shaw, collaborator in the design of the Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue, brought to the apartment the crowning pedigree of respectabiltiy when he initiated ownership covenants for one of his buildings. The agreements helped pave the way for state legislation that established the cooperative apartment as a forerunner to the condominium.

But then as now, builders focused on single-story floor plans. Despite the popularity of duplexes, ``there are only a handful of them in the city,`` said Helen Baker, executive vice president of Sudler Marling Inc., which manages several luxury condominium buildings in Chicago. The majority of the duplexes in town are condominiums that, with three bedrooms, sell for more than $700,000, Baker said.

In the new Olympia Center condominium building, 161 E. Chicago Ave., two 8,000-square-foot duplexes sold for close to $2 million each even before the building went up, said Ann Buchbinder, center sales director. Most of the 12 duplexes, built on the top six floors of the 63-story skyscraper, have been sold. One of the smaller duplexes (1,850 square feet with one bedroom and a loft) still available is selling for $440,000, Buchbinder said. She attributes the success of the duplex units to ``a demand for dramatic space.``

22 STORIES UP

Those who find such space don`t give it up. The Jacksons waited through two tenants before they were able to lease their duplex penthouse, which they have lived in for 25 years.

As advertising and public relations partners in the Julian J. Jackson Agency, they entertain frequently at home for clients, which have included the Chicago Historical Society, Ravinia, private schools and medical organizations.

``We`ve hosted receptions, seminars and a large scholarship tea here,``

Eleanor Jackson said. ``There seems to be something about the apartment that is so welcoming.``

Parties spill out onto the rooftop terrace with its sweeping three-sided view of Streeterville. But inside, it`s easy to forget that the home is 22 stories up.